


Early Days

by Es_Aitch



Series: Twelfth Doctor One Shots  Series 9 [14]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (1963), Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Episode: s09e11 Heaven Sent, Gen, Grief/Mourning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-23
Updated: 2019-05-13
Packaged: 2019-08-28 08:05:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 20,384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16719555
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Es_Aitch/pseuds/Es_Aitch
Summary: If the Doctor Remembered ‘every time’ in the Confession Dial, what was that first time like, before he left all the clues for himself?  How might he have changed things over time, to encourage himself to get out faster?  How did those changes come about?  This is my idea for it.





	1. First Time/Day One

**Author's Note:**

> I used the filming script, not only to ease my copy/pasting of dialogue, but to include ideas and images that were cut from the broadcast version. So if something looks unfamiliar, it’s not necessarily my idea, but might have come from that. I have added a lot of own ideas as well, because of the missed opportunities and also to fix some of the plot holes (like places where Moffat got confused in his own writing about locations in the castle.)
> 
> * * *

**First Time/** **Day One**

The Doctor materialised inside the tube with a cough.  It had been a long time since he had teleported like that and it shocked his system more than he expected.  He peered out through the glass, trying to get his bearings.  He noticed stone walls around him, which was odd given the technology of the teleport.  Then he noticed hinges and he gently pushed on the glass.  The area gave way and allowed him to exit.  

He stepped out and closed the door.  As he turned, a light from a window caught the corner of his eye.  It reminded him of the light he saw as the raven had entered Clara’s body.  He gasped softly at the memory and looked down to clear his mind.  The floor was sandy.  It wasn’t dust.  It was sand, there wasn’t a great deal of it, but enough to be noticeable.  He leaned over to run his fingers through it.  There was enough to make patterns in it.  It seemed to be similar material to the stone floor.

He stood again and took a better look around the room.  He noticed a screen in one part and he stepped forward to examine it more closely.  It was displaying static.  That was curious.  “If you think because she is dead, I am weak, then you understand very little.  If you were any part of killing her and you are not afraid, then you understand nothing at all.  So for your own sake, understand this:  I am the Doctor and I’m coming to find you!”

Moments later, a stone door slid open.  The Doctor stepped through it.  He found himself in a curving corridor, with windows along one side.  He stepped forward to one and leaned over the ledge to get a better look at his surroundings.  He looked down and saw that he was high up in a stone tower.  He couldn’t see the bottom – it was hidden in the mist.  He looked up and saw the rest of the tower above him.  Interesting.  He was halfway between the two destinations.  Across from him was another building.  Well, the same building, as there were corridors connecting them.  He pulled back and made his way to one.  It was labelled, “East”.  Well, directions were good.  It was time for him to let them know his own knowledge about them.  “The equipment in that room is consistent with an augmented, ultra-long-range teleport. So I am not more than a single light year from where I was and I am in the same time zone.  When the sun sets, I’ll be able to establish an exact position by the stars. Then you’ll have a choice: come out and show yourself. Or keep hiding. Clara said I shouldn’t take revenge. You should know, I don’t always listen.”

As he spoke, he continued around and found three more corridors.  Each labelled with a direction: North, West, South.  This was getting tedious.  “Well come on! Chop, chop!  The Doctor will see you now! Show me what you’ve got! I just watched my best friend die in agony - my day can’t get any worse. Let’s see what we can do about yours.”  He paused a moment, waiting for a reply.  Hearing nothing, he continued.  “Don’t try to be mysterious, not with me. I don’t even have a name, I’m automatically ahead.”

As he made his way back towards East, one of the screens caught his attention.  It flared to life.  He watched it for a moment, then he noticed that the image on the screen was of him.  He was confused for a moment, and he looked around for cameras.  He thought back to his experience of the sleep-dust on the station near Neptune: the way it behaved as cameras.  He stepped towards a nearby window and peered through it to the other side.  There, in another window, was some sort of creature.  When the creature turned and moved, the image on the screens also turned and moved.  Curious.

He watched for a few moments as the creature moved through the castle.  It was coming towards him.  He swallowed thickly as he watched it come up the corridor marked “North”.  He moved through the round corridor.  Close enough to keep the creature’s attention, but far enough away that he could escape.  Then he stopped.  He heard something.  The hum of thousands of flying insects.  As he remained still, a few flies came closer towards him.

He hated flies.  Ever since his experience with the Wirrns, he has hated flies.  But he stood fast.  He wanted to get a good look at this creature.  As the hum grew in noise and more flies came towards him, he just couldn’t stand it any longer.  He took off running down the “West” corridor.  He paused before entering it.  He wanted to see the creature.  As it came around the corner, he could only see the swarm of flies and the shadowy figure.  It was coming after him. 

He needed to get a better look, but from a safer location.  He moved down the hall and came to a door.  He pulled on it, but it was locked.  He realised he was trapped.  This was wrong.  He reached in his pocket for his sonic but stopped that and leant his head against the door for a moment.  “Still no setting for wood!  Why haven’t I fixed that yet?”

There was only one thing for it.  He might be able to get out of the corridor before the creature… that’s when he heard the ominous hum of the swarm of flies.  Too late.  The creature was there.  Well, only one thing for it.  He could get a good look at it.  He went halfway back up the hall.  And he could see the creature.  It was a tall creature, covered in dirty veils.  But he still couldn’t see the creature itself.  But there was something terrifying about it.  “I know you!  Something… buried deep…”

He needed time to think, and to do that, he needed an escape.  He looked to the windows, but he was too far up in the castle, and didn’t have a way to break them.  He could make a run for it… but the creature was in the corridor now and it was too narrow to allow him to get past it.  He turned back around.  The only option was the door.  

“I used to know a trick. Back when I was young and telepathic.  Now clearly you can’t form an actual psychic link with a door, for one very obvious reason - they’re notoriously cross.  I mean imagine life as a door -people keep pushing you out of the way. Everybody knocks, but it’s never for you.  And you get locked up every night.”  He could hear the creature getting closer, but he had to focus.  He closed his eyes.  “But, if you’re just a little bit nice ...”  

He smiled as he heard the clicks of the locks releasing.  He pulled open the door and behind it, he discovered a stone wall.  He was horrified.  There really was no way out.  No clever trick.  He was stuck.  “Finally ran out of corridor.  There’s a life summed up.”  He swallowed thickly as he realised this was it.  This creature was going to capture him.  Possibly kill him.  This was not a good feeling.  “This is new. I’m scared. Never realised that before - I’m actually scared of dying.”

Suddenly, everything seemed to stop.  There was a deep silence.  The Doctor took a breath.  Okay not everything stopped.  Just the flies and the creature.  Well, ‘just’.  ‘Just’ in this case was actually a big deal.  He looked out the window, some clouds were still moving.  Only the swarm of flies and the creature.  “Was it something I said? What did I say?”  He looked at one of the flies, mere inches from his face.  He flicked it with his fingers, but instead of moving towards the creature, it dropped to the floor with a pathetic buzz.  He looked back at the creature.  “Why did you stop?”

And then everything around him started to shudder like a great earthquake.  He looked out the window and saw the impossible.  The entire structure was moving and turning.  Different floors were moving at different speeds and in different directions.  He felt a draft of wind and turned to look behind him, the stone wall that had blocked his path was moving out of the way.  He had an out and he took it!

He escaped into a bedroom.  He looked around it.  On one wall was a screen mounted displaying static like it had when he had first arrived.  A fireplace was on the other wall and a writing desk was placed in front of the window and the bed was… well, he sat on it to test it.  It would suffice, if he needed to sleep.  He hoped he wouldn’t be here long enough to need it.  He looked around again.  Some fresh cut flowers were on the writing desk.  He walked over and picked one up.  He sniffed it.  Real enough.  And fresh.  Interesting.  He looked out the window, still a long way down and no ledges that he could use to lower himself either.

That was going to be problematic very soon.  He could hear the hum of the flies surrounding the creature.  He looked back at the screen, it was definitely coming this way.  It suddenly hit him, why he recognised the creature.  As it came closer to him, he named it.  “When I was a very little boy, there was an old lady who died. They covered her in veils, but it was a hot day, and the flies came. Gave me nightmares for years. So who’s been stealing my nightmares?”

He watched the creature carefully as it came closer.  He plucked a petal free and from the corner of his eye, watched how it fell.  “What is this place?? Is it a trap? A prison? No! A torture chamber! Am I right?” With a horrified sinking feeling, he started to back away from the creature.  “Somebody should know better.  Anyone who could set this all up, and steal my bad dreams, really should know better.”

He held the flower stem up to seemingly ward off the creature.  Then he released it.  “The secrets I have - no chance. Not telling, not me.”

He leant forward and picked up a nearby stool.  “Told you I was scared of dying.  Wasn’t lying either. Advantage: me!”  He tossed the stool at the window, shattering it.  “Because you won’t see this coming.”  And with that, he dove out the window.

As he sailed through the air, he closed his eyes.  He hoped he was right, that there was water at the bottom of the tower, or this was going to be a very sudden end.  Rather than focusing on that, he put himself in the safest location he could think of:  His TARDIS. 

He burst through the doors.  “Sorry I’m late. Jumped out of a window.”

He approached the console.  He continued to talk to her.  “Certain death. No way out. Bet you want to know how I survived! Go on - ask!”

The TARDIS groaned in reply.  He continued.  “You know me better than that!  Of course I had to jump! Rule one of being interrogated - you’re the only irreplaceable person in the torture chamber. The room is yours. So work it. If they’re threatening you with death, show them who’s boss - die faster!  But then… You already know that about me.”

He takes a breath and looks around the empty TARDIS.  This wasn’t helping.  He needed something.  Someone.  He needed encouragement.  But he couldn’t choose the figure.  Clara was far too painful just now.  And anyone else’s death would only remind him of her.  The TARDIS offered a projection of Barbara: his first teacher.  The TARDIS whispered into his mind, “ _She doesn’t_.”

The Doctor nodded, accepting the offer for what it was, even if he knew she wasn’t there.  “Rule one of dying - don’t.  Rule two - slow down.”

He studied the schematic on the console and input some coordinates.  The image there slowed down enough for him to have some time.  “You’ve got the rest of your life. The faster you think, the slower it will pass.  Concentrate! Focus! _Assume_ you’re going to survive. Always assume that.  Imagine you’ve _already_ survived.”

As he continued to fall, he blinked slowly.  He explained to Barbara the purpose of his storm room, his TARDIS.  But, as with all of his explanations, he needed someone to hear them.  The TARDIS – or his storm room version of her, was happy to oblige.  He started to think more quickly.  “Thought I smelled salt earlier, but when I broke the window, I was sure. Salty air. This castle is standing in the sea!”  He typed more information into the console.  “Diving into water from a great height is not a guarantee of survival. I need to know exactly how far I’m going to fall, and how fast.  There was the wind resistance against the stool, which I could hear as it fell.  The atmospheric density, which I could measure from the flower petal falling.  The strength of the local gravity, which I measured when I dropped the flower to pick up the stool.”

He looked across the room at his former companion.  “Am I spoiling the magic?  It’s never been easy, you know.  I actually have to work at it.”

He waited for the TARDIS to perform the calculations.  “I should hit the water in about… point-zero-two seconds.  The chances of remaining conscious are….”

Everything went black around him as he hit the water.  He heard a faint scratching noise.  It took a minute to realise it was the sound of chalk on a chalkboard.  But who could possibly be writing under water?  He opened his eyes inside his storm room.  He noticed a blackboard in the corner.  In Barbara’s perfect script, he saw the following words:   
**Question 1**    
**What is this place?**

The Doctor sighed heavily.  He knew physically he was under water and a part of him would have happily stayed there.  “Can’t I just sleep?  Just rest this once?”

He heard more scratching and looked over at another blackboard.   
**Question 2**    
**What did you say**    
**that made the**    
**creature stop?**

“Do I have to know _everything_?”

More scratching and he looked around to find a third blackboard.   
**Question 3**    
**How are you going to**

He shook his head at what he knew was coming.  “Barbara, you should know by now that I don’t always...”

**WIN?**

He closed his eyes against the many meanings of that word.  Clara had used that so often and to have his first teacher use it as well was almost too much.  When he opened his eyes, he found himself underwater.  He looked around to get his bearings.  He could see the sunlight flickering above him, so started to swim in that direction.  When his head broke the surface, he took a gasping breath.  He looked around him.  The bedroom he had jump from had been on the larger, main part of the castle, and he was now clearly on the outside of the castle.  He treaded water for a few minutes to take in his surroundings.  Besides the castle, there was nothing but water as far as he could see.  He started to swim toward the castle, wondering how he would get back in.  As he got closer, he noticed a door and there were even steps leading from the water to get to it easily.

Once he was at the entrance, he looked back from where he had swum.  The he looked up at the castle and realised from out here, there wasn’t any of the mist that seemed trapped on the other side – between the tower and the main part of the castle.  Weird.  Of course, this whole place was weird.

He shivered as a breeze caught him and reminded him that he was soaking wet.  He needed to dry off and maybe find a change of clothes.  With that, he entered the main part of the castle.  He walked down a hall and found an antechamber with a roaring fire.  “Bit of a boot cupboard, isn’t it?”  There was a drying rack and a small stool to sit.  “Not a bit.  A boot cupboard is _exactly_ what this is.”

He wasn’t one to pass up a good fire, especially soaking wet as he was.  So he sat on the stool.  And warmed his hands at the flames.  Then he looked over at the drying rack.  He had too many clothes on and it would take forever to dry like this.  He dragged the rack closer to the fire, took off his jacket and waistcoat, and hung them to dry.  He sat on the stool again.  Then decided to take off his shoes and socks.  He sat there a few more minutes.  He wasn’t one to want to sit too long.  He stripped down to his underwear and hung the various items on the rack.  Well, at least he could feel the heat from the fire over his entire body now.  

While he was drying and warming himself, he thought about everything he had seen so far.  The castle was haunted somehow.  Or at the very least creepy.  “What’s going on? What is this?”

The last question from the blackboard flashed across his mind: “ _How are you going to win?_ ”  He sighed and pulled a hand down his face as he thought about how to answer it.  “I don’t know yet!  I don’t have enough information.  You’re supposed to be helping me; not nagging.”

He stood up and started to pace around the room.  He didn’t want to leave without clothes to wear, after all, who knew what he might encounter.  Wearing clothing was as much about protection as warmth.  “I arrived in the teleport machine.  There was a screen in that room, I remember it...”

He gasped at that thought and looked around.  There was no screen in this room.  He had no way to know exactly where the creature was.  Not that it mattered, he didn’t know the building well enough to be able to distinguish any images he would have seen.  “That’s not helpful.  I need to keep moving.”

He looked over at the drying rack.  He rearranged the clothes so different sides were facing the fire.  He could leave his waistcoat and jacket to dry completely, if he had at everything else.  He didn’t like not knowing where the creature was.  But he needed to be drier before he left.  He looked down at himself.  If he had at least his boots with him, that would work.

He sat on the available stool and put his shoes back on.  “Agh!  Still too wet.  Never mind, I just need to find a monitor.”

He went through the archway, which opened into a large ballroom location.  In a corner, was a monitor.  He rushed over to it and recognised the place the creature was.  He looked out a window to estimate how high the location was.  He couldn’t see very far because of the layer of mist.  It seemed to always mask the opposite side from where he was looking.  “Never any answers.  Just more questions.”  

From what he could see, the entire structure was like a wagon wheel.  The hallways, like the one he had gone down before he found the bedroom, were like spokes.  The tower was like the axel.  And the rest of the castle was like the tire.   Still he could estimate based on how far he had fallen when he jumped out of the widow.  “Building this high.  Creature that slow.  I give it an hour.”

With that in mind, he returned to the fire to finish drying.  Sitting still was the hardest thing for the Doctor, because if he was completely honest with himself, there were truths he didn’t want to face and sitting still forced him to confront those things.  Basically, he had time to think.  Too much time to think.  If he thought too hard about things, he got to focused on himself.  The only way he ever won was keeping the focus on everyone else.  But in this place?  It seems it was only him.  And that creature.  Whatever it was.  

He stood and touched his clothes, rotating a few of them again to get them to dry faster.  Even his hair was nearly dry now.  He did the shirt last.  It was dry.  He put it on, because a little something was better than just his pullover and pants.  His shoes and socks were going to take the longest.  That was quite annoying.  Why did the parts he wanted to dry first take the longest? “Bit like watching the kettle boil, I suppose.  Difference is, I’m usually doing three other things and the waiting doesn’t feel so long.”

He huffed in exasperation and started to pace.  He felt his clothes again and sighed.  “I don’t want to wait any longer.” 

His trousers were mostly dry now, so he put them on.  Then he felt his shoes and socks.  More damp than wet, which would be good enough.  He was unlikely to get blisters, so he put those on as well. His waistcoat and jacket were still too wet, so he left those behind.  Finally, he could move along.  He went back into the dining room to check on the screen.  He had no idea where the creature was now, so he kept moving.  

Next to the dining hall was the great pantry for the kitchen.  There were another set of cogs, he had seen those all over the Castle too, which made sense.  How else would the place move?  He studied the screen for some time.  He watched how the movement was a lurch-pause fashion.  “It’s following me.  No matter where I go.  Why does it keep doing that?”

An image of a blackboard flashed through is mind.  “WRONG QUESTION!”

He huffed in annoyance.  “Okay, teacher, what’s the right question, then?”

“What?”

He frowned when the question came to his mind. “What, what?  There’s so much to go with it.  ‘What is this place?’ ‘What is the creature?’” He paused for a moment and looked at the screen again.  “It’s following me. Wherever I go, it’s tracking me. Slowly though. Scary lurching.”  He paused as the word sank in.  “Scary.”  He moved to the screen again.  “These screens, everywhere. It’s showing me exactly where it is, all the time. How far it’s got. How near.”  He paused again as the pieces came together.  “Because it’s trying to scare me!  Putting its breath on my neck. That’s the point, that’s what it’s doing. This is theatre - it’s all about fear.”  He moved to stand in the centre of the room, slowly turning to look at every part of it.  “Working hypothesis. I’m in a fully automated haunted house. A mechanical maze...” 

Suddenly, from behind him, he heard a clattering noise.  He turned and noticed the pots were swinging.  Had something hit them?  Had the creature caught up to him?  Or was it simply the wind?  He moved towards them and put a hand on them to stop them.  “It’s a killer puzzle box, designed to scare me to death, and I’m trapped inside it.”  Then he spoke more to Barbara than to himself. “Must be Christmas!”

On the chalkboard, a message appeared: “You always think that.”

He nodded in response and settled a bit, it was as much of an approval as he was going to get.  He would take it.  Barbara didn’t give such encouragement lightly.

He heard another clang from off in the distance.  He followed it and noticed mist coming in from somewhere.  He followed the mist and came to a hall with many barred windows.  He looked out into the garden, it was covered in mist.  It was not well managed, but he could tell that with a bit of work how it could spruce itself up.  

Well, that’s what he thought, anyway.  It was quite dark now.  Dark.  Stars!  He rushed to the door and walked out into the garden and looked up.  The door closed with a loud clang, which startled him.  He took a breath. “Keep calm, Doctor.”

He looked up again.  He couldn’t see much of the sky because of the mist but what he could see was... troubling.  “That can’t be right!”

He shook his head and continued back inside.  Time to break out of this place, if he could and explore it properly if he couldn’t.


	2. First Time/Through Week Two

The Doctor decided it was time he left the atrium.  He pulled open the door and behind it was the creature.  He tried to close the door again, but the creature stuck its arm through it.  This gave the Doctor a good look at it.  It was quite skeletal, but more silver than white.  There was a fleshy aspect to it which made it that much more horrifying.  At least with the Vashta Nerada, the bones were picked clean.  This was... strangely terrifying.  And he didn’t quite understand why it scared him so much.  With great effort, he was able to push the door closed again.  He leaned against it with his back towards it.  Off to the side, he saw a spade.  He took it and jammed it under the door handle.  “Physics of a triangle: you lose!”

The Creature tried to get in with a couple more pushes.  Then it started to move off, giving up.  The Doctor watched as it passed the windows.  He shrugged.  “Okay.  It can set traps.” A small smile flashed across his features.  “Thing is: I’m _good_ at traps.”

He ran to the window to look at one of the screens.  He could see the creature had made it to the pantry he had been in earlier.  “So.  Where are you off to now?”

He took a long and careful look around the garden area.  “Only one way in and one way out...” He looked back at the monitor.  The creature was now moving past the pantry into the dining hall.  “So where are you going?”

He looked at the spade jammed under the door and then at the monitor to see where the creature was.  He took the spade out from the door and looked at the monitor again.  The creature stopped.  The Doctor tensed as he prepared to put the spade back in place.  But the Veil started again, moving off to wherever it was headed.  The Doctor smirked.  “And the hunted becomes the hunter.”

With that, he tossed the spade aside before he slowly opened the door and started to follow the way back to the pantry. As he moved along, he remembered a trick from long ago, in another body.  In the universe of Anti-Time.  He had been trapped with Charley in the Divergent Universe.  “You see Barbara, I discovered back then that if I walk at a reasonable pace, my hearts beat ten times a minute. If I am sitting, it can slow down to six times and if I run, as fast as sixty. The point is: I have an internal metronome.  All I have to do is keep track of it and I can figure out how fast the creature moves.”

He spent the next few hours exploring the castle and timing the creature.  He would constantly count the beats of his hearts using some part of his body.  Sometimes it was just a finger tap, sometimes his foot, if he felt very distracted, he’d do something more drastic like clap one of his hands.  He discovered that he could get quite a lot of distance between them, though he never stayed in one place long enough to time exactly how much time he could get.  Time enough for that later.  But it gave him the time he needed to consider the castle. He noted that there were numbers on all the rooms, but they seemed to appear in random order.  Barbara’s writing appeared on the blackboard again: **What is this place?**

“I don’t know yet.  That’s what I’m trying to figure out.  But none of it is making sense.”

He reached into his pockets, he had a sketch book somewhere... ahh.  It was in his jacket.  That was still hanging by the fire.  It probably wasn’t dry yet. He sighed.  He finally had an idea he could act on and he’d have to wait awhile longer.  He pulled a hand down his face in annoyance as he realised he was tired. 

Sleep might be for tortoises, but even Time Lords need to sleep on occasion.  He had been pushing himself too hard recently.  Helping Clara to run from... He gasped loudly as the thought hit him that she had been running from Danny’s death, no matter how much she protested it.  And now he was here.  He was stuck.  The only running he would experience would be from that dreaded creature.  That thought made him glance over at the monitor.  It was a part of the castle he hadn’t seen yet.  “Okay.  I need a little rest. Lightly doze, nothing more.  Then get my jacket and start making a map.”

He made his way to the bedroom.  It was still open to him.  “Well, small blessings.”

He walked to the bed and sat down.  He leant over to undo his shoes, but then thought better of it.  Instead, he laid down in such a position that he could hear things around him and see the monitor immediately when he opened his eyes.  He knew he wouldn’t sleep well, but it would be enough.  He closed his eyes and slowed his breathing again.  His finger tapped out the time.  He knew he would have about an hour.

The problem with sleeping was losing count.  The Doctor fell asleep quite soundly this time.  The tapping of his finger had slowed and finally stopped.  He heard a buzzing noise near him and felt the air move near his face.  He swatted at the buzz.  It moved away and came back.  He suddenly woke to full alert, when he realised that it meant flies!  And flies meant the creature. He looked around.  The creature was leaning over and reaching towards him.  He closed his eyes and put himself into his “storm room”.

“Well!  That was another close one! Or it will have been when I’ve been and gone and got myself out of it.  So how am I going to do that?”  He looked towards the blackboards.  This time, the script was different.  Less organised, but nothing that resembled words.  Jo’s?  Why’s she here?  He took a breath, pointless to try to argue with your subconscious when it’s trying to help.  “Come on, ask me questions, it’s what you’re good at.”

He looked at the blackboard again.  The letters had arranged themselves into: “ **Tell no lies.** ”

“That’s not helpful!  What does that even mean?”

He looked for another blackboard.  The one in Barbara’s script was still there: “ **What did you say to make the creature stop?** "

He shivered as the realisation hit him. He admitted to his fears.  “The truth, yes. But not just any old truth. This whole place is designed to terrify me. In a place like that, how long before you’d say anything? Give up anyone! I’m being interrogated. So it’s not just truth it wants, that’s not enough - it’s _confession_.”

The thought terrified him – admitting to his deepest fears was almost scarier than the creature itself.  “I have to tell truths I’ve never told before. That’s the only thing that stops it.  Trouble is …" he was talking to everyone now – everyone in his head who were trying to help him.  “...There are truths I can’t ever tell.  Not for anything.”  He slumped down into one of the seats.  “But I’m scared.” He paused.  “I’m alone and I’m very, very scared.” 

Not knowing what else to do he closed his eyes.  When he opened them again he spoke quickly.  “I didn’t leave Gallifrey because I was bored. That was a lie, and it’s always been a lie.”

The Veil stopped moving towards him but didn’t move back either.  It was clearly waiting for something.  The Doctor stared it down for a moment.  “Not enough? You want more?”

Again, it didn’t move at all waiting for more information, clearly.  The Doctor swallowed thickly and admitted to the truth it wanted to hear.  “I was scared! I ran because I was _scared_.  Is that what you want me to say? Is that _true_ enough for you?”

The Creature slowly retracted its hands and took a step back.  The Doctor knew this was his chance, so he bolted out of bed and made his way to the other side of the castle, avoiding the changing rooms as he went along.  Maybe he was lucky, and the creature was now trapped in the room.  He ran all the way back to the boot cupboard he had been in after he climbed out of the water.  It would give him time.  He walked to the door and looked out across the water.  He sighed heavily.  He felt sick.  He was giving the Creature exactly what it wanted.  “It’s hard to be brave when there’s no one to pretend to....”

So many companions had told him to never travel alone.  Donna had taken it a step further to tell him he needed someone to stop him.  And now here he was: more alone than he had ever been.  He sat on the stairs that led into the water.  He needed a moment to gather his wits.  That was a hell of a way to wake up.  Once he took a few minutes to breathe properly, he stood and made his way back in.  His waistcoat and jacket were both completely dry now.  Good.  There was a chill in the air.  Or maybe he was still spooked from his last encounter with the Creature.  Either way, they would provide more protection.  He put them on and felt more like himself for doing so. 

He felt around in his pockets.  Good.  Everything was dry.  He pulled out the pocketbook and a pencil.  “Need to start somewhere, may as well be here.”

He started to draft his map.  He kept the sketches simple.  He knew the castle moved but wanted to understand how.  He could add in details about specific rooms and their locations later.  This was a good method for learning the castle, but it also allowed him to time the creature. 

After several hours of this, the Doctor realised that he had a map and understood how best to move through most of the castle.  That meant he could avoid the creature more easily and move more freely about the castle.  He had made his way back to the bedroom.  This time, he realised something.  The stool was back where it had been originally.  The window was intact.  The flower petal was gone.  The flower he had dropped on the floor was back in the vase.  He frowned. He hadn’t noticed that earlier when he had come to take a nap.  Clearly, he had been more tired than he realised.  He picked up the flower again and plucked a petal off.  He watched it fall.  He stared at the flower in his hand.  “I wonder...”

He carried the flower with him into the teleport room and placed it on the control console.  He looked over it.  “Teleporter.  But only allows for entry.  No exit.  Downloads, but no uploads."

He was about to cross off the idea of ever coming into the room again, when he heard the rumbling of a door.  It wasn’t the one he used to enter.  It was on the other side.  A set of stairs led up into the tower.  He followed them.

At the top, he found it was daylight.  He had a good view of the entire castle from here.  But he also had a view of the expansive sea surrounding it.  Writing on the blackboard flashed across his mind again.  Barbara’s script had become Jo’s:  **What is this place?**

He hummed in thought.  “This place.  My castle.  It’s very me.” He looked a short way down and saw the spokes and could even tell how some of each floor would move.  “It’s complicated.”  He turned his gaze to the entrance from the sea.  “It goes on and on.”  He looked across the water.  No other thing in sight.  “It’s alone.”

Again, a shiver ran through him.  He was thinking about things that he didn’t really want to.  There was something terrible about this place and he wasn’t sure what it was.  He needed to distract himself.  “Food!  I haven’t eaten in far too long.  I should see about a meal.”

As he made his way back down to the pantry, he checked at the teleport console.  The flower was still there.  Not unexpected.  It should be there.  He looked at the monitor to see where the creature was.  It was coming down the “North” corridor.  Good.  He could take the East one to get where he wanted to go.

Once in the kitchen, he looked around for what to eat.  The pantry wasn’t well stocked.  He had honestly expected more.  There was a small loaf of bread, some butter, wine to drink, and soup.  It wasn’t just any soup, though, it was vrolasan.  Vrolasan was a vegetable found on Gallifrey that was similar to tomatoes.  But that wasn’t the significant part.  Like the creature, it was something from his childhood.  It had been his favourite soup when he was little.  There wasn’t as much food as he hoped, but he could eat half of the bread and a little soup now and save the rest for later.

Decision made, he set about warming the food.  “More things from my childhood.  So, it is to be a torture chamber.”

He finished cooking and then carried the items out to the dining hall and set the table to eat.  He ate a few bites and considered his situation.  As far as he could figure out, other than the creature that hunted him, he was alone.  Also, so far, he hadn’t found a way out.  Though, the castle moved – when he made the creature stop.  So maybe the exit was hidden somewhere.  The problem was: confessions.  As much as people accused him of lying, he had very few confessions to make and all of them were connected to the fears he hated to admit even to himself. 

Thinking about his fears made him jumpy.  He needed to calm down.  He had seen a library, maybe he should try to settle into this place.  Read a book.  If he was going to be here awhile, that might help.  He cleared up the plates and washed them.  And decided to get a book.  He checked where the creature was.  He’d be able to get about an hour ahead of it from where he was right now to the library.  Good.  All he had to do is stay ahead of it.

He made it quickly to the library and looked around.  Books were on shelves that ran from floor to ceiling.  He ran his fingers along the spines.  He frowned as he looked at them.  “No titles on the books?  How would I ever find the book I’m looking for?”

Puzzled, he pulled out a book and opened to the first page where the title should be.  It was blank.  He turned a few pages in until he found some text.  It was a poem of sorts:  
“As you come into this world, something else is also born.  
You begin your life, and it begins a journey:  towards you.  
It moves slowly, but it never stops.  
Wherever you go, whatever path you take, it will follow; never faster, never slower, always coming.  
You will run - it will walk. You will rest - it will not.  
One day you will linger in the same place too long.  
You will sit too still or sleep too deep - and when, too late, you rise to go, you will notice a second shadow next to yours.   
Your life will then be over.”

He flipped through the book.  The entire thing was just the same text, written over and over again.  He tossed the book aside and pulled out another.  Same thing.  Same poem, written over and over again.  He continued to do this, moving to different parts of the library and pulling out different books from different areas.  After looking at the fifteenth book, he was angry and frustrated.  With a growl, he flung the book across the room.  Jo’s writing appeared again:  “ **How are you going to WIN?**”

He sank into a couch.  “How can I possibly win?  Imagine a world where something is always coming. Every second, something deadly is always closer, with every breath you take. You can’t sleep, you can’t sit still, every moment you’re looking over your shoulder. How long before you’re out of your mind?”

And that was the trouble, he was going a bit stir crazy.  He was being hounded and yet he was trapped at the same time.  Like a mouse in a snake’s cage.  It would only be so long before it’s captured and eaten.  The end is inevitable. 

He heard the buzzing of flies and knew he needed to get moving again.  He made his way back to the teleporter room.  He checked the controls.  The flower was gone.  He went back to his bedroom.  The petal he had dropped was also gone and the flower, whole was back in its vase.  “So, it tidies up after itself.  Automated room service.  Like a hotel.  I hate hotels.”

He straightened his jacket.  And that made him think of something.  He rushed back down past the dining hall and into the pantry, then down the hall and to the atrium garden.  The spade he had haplessly tossed aside when he left was now propped against the wall as it had been when he first got here.  “So, everything reverts to the same condition.” 

He shivered again and rubbed his arms to calm himself.  His jacket.  “Except my clothes.  They hadn’t vanished….”

Time for another experiment.  He went back to the boot cupboard and took off his jacket and waist coat.  He hung the waistcoat on the drying rack, but put his jacket back on.  “I’m a little chilly, besides I can afford to lose that, but not this.”

He would come back later to see if it was still there.  “On the positive side, I won’t have to worry about cleaning up after myself.”

The next several days passed in a similar fashion.  The Doctor tried to affect changes in the castle, and didn’t worry about cleaning up after himself.  He wanted to see how much he could change things, and he would spend time exploring some rooms in more depth.  He couldn’t change as much as he wanted.  But his waistcoat remained.  Which meant, he would be able to change some things.  Question was, did it remain because of him, or because it had come into the castle with him?  No way to test that one.

Several days later, he was exploring the lower levels again, when he heard the shifting of stone.  “Odd.  I thought it only moved when the creature stopped.  Has the castle a mind of its own, then?”

Still, he couldn’t resist the opportunity to explore a new area.  He found what appeared to be an artist’s studio.  There were paints, canvas, and frames.  He found that curious.  “A studio and no gallery… Seems unlikely.  There weren’t any paintings anywhere that I have seen so far…” 

Good, it would give him something specific to look for.  He needed that.  A distraction.  Something new to do.  He could go looking for the gallery.

It took him several hours.  Mostly, he figured that the castle indeed had a mind of its own and some parts shifted even without stopping the creature.  When he entered, though, he wished he hadn’t.  Continuing with the theme that the place was a torture chamber, inside the gallery were portraits.  But not just any random people from his life.  They were all companions who had died while under his care.  He took as much time as he dared to look at each one.  Katarina: She had sacrificed herself to save him and perhaps the entire solar system.  Shortly after, Sara had been aged to death in front of him.  To lose two at once, so soon after leaving Susan…

He shook his head to clear it.  He had to keep moving.  Next: Adric, he had been one of his youngest companions ever.  He had stuck by him through Romana leaving and his regeneration.  And then, he made the ultimate sacrifice to save them from the Cybermen. 

Astrid, he had all but forgotten her.  But he helped her to say goodbye, that was the important thing.  A beautiful portrait of Amy and Rory in their wedding attire.  He missed them even in this body, which he doubted they would have accepted.  Maybe they were still alive and he could get back to New York one day…

River.  He spent very little time with her portrait.  He wasn’t ready to think on her death yet.  And in one sense, she was still alive.  He knew he took her to the Singing Towers… So, he would get out of here.  He hoped.  But, that was the wrong motivation for this place.

Which brought him to the last one.  Clara.  He sighed heavily.  “The day you lose someone isn’t the worst.  At least you’ve got something to do. It’s all the days they stay dead.”

He checked the monitor.  The creature was closing in.  That could be the right motivation for this place.  If for no other reason than she gave him the order to not let this change him.  “What do you think, Tegan?  Time for another experiment?”

He grasped the edges of the photo and… yes!  He could lift it off the wall.  He would take it with him to his bedroom.  Ever since it had opened, it seemed to remain available to him.  And if the castle put the photo back, he would take it back up there again.  It would be a good experiment.

In his bedroom, he placed it on the mantle.  He stepped back and smiled sadly at it.  She would keep in him check.  He hoped.  Or, like everything else in the castle, it would reset itself and return to the gallery.

He nodded at it.  “For now, though, I should eat again.”

He was worried, though.  What if the consumed food didn’t reappear.  What if that was all he had left?  He had been avoiding the pantry for that reason.  But it was time.  He couldn’t go longer without eating.  He swallowed hard as he entered the pantry.  And, actually to his pleasure, the bread was a complete loaf again.  The pot was full of soup.  “They don’t want me to die.  Torture indeed.  I think this whole place is inside a closed energy loop. Constantly recycling.  Potentially, it could go on forever.”

Well, that has its advantages and disadvantages.  It would give him time to find a way out.  After he ate, he returned to the top of the tower.  It was dark again.  He looked at the stars.  “There’s something I’m missing and I think it’s something terrible.  The stars are all in the wrong places.  I didn’t time travel and I’m not more than a lightyear from earth.”

He didn’t want to think about what the stars were telling him.  They were giving him a precise location, but it didn’t make sense for so many reasons.  Mostly, because they were different compared to that first night.  Which meant he was in motion.  But where?  Where could he be?  And why?  And how could the entire place move like that?  “More questions.  The more I learn the more questions I have.  And not enough answers.”

Several days later, he had an idea.  Clara’s picture had moved back to the gallery several times, but each time it remained longer and longer in the bedroom.  So, given enough time, he could affect some changes in the castle.  He needed to inspire himself.  Keep himself busy.  So, he returned to the studio and found some paints and a brush.  Then he went to the library and took one of the books.  On a wall near his bedroom, he started to paint the poem.  He started with just the first line, just to see how long it would take for it to stay.  “As you come into this world, something else is also born.”

Finished with that, he decided it was time to eat again.  The food seemed to replenish more quickly than the rest of the castle.  Still, he only ate half of what was offered each time.  He didn’t want to press his luck should he change too much and the castle decide to starve him to death after all.  As he sat to eat, he had a thought.  “Two weeks.  I’ve been here two weeks and still haven’t found a way out.  Maybe this is Hell. That's okay. I'm not scared of Hell. It's just Heaven for bad people. But how long will I have to be here? Forever?”  He froze, his spoon in mid-air, as he thought about just how long ‘forever’ actually was.  Then slowly, he dropped the spoon and it clattered to the bowl with a loud noise.  He shook himself from the horror of that thought, then decided it was time to move on.  He left the dishes, since that was one of the things that reset. 

He returned to his bedroom.  Clara’s picture was still there.  “Over 24 hours.  Good.  Progress.”  He returned to the wall.  The words were still there.  “Even better.”

Just to give himself something to do, he finished painting the rest of the poem…


	3. First Time/Week Five

Ever since moving her portrait to his bedroom, the Doctor had taken to identifying the images and voices in his head as Clara.  Her picture seemed to be a fixed object in his bedroom now.  He had slept in other parts of the castle, avoiding the room for over twenty-four hours and it had remained.  The first few lines of the poem had started to stay on the wall as well.  They motivated him to not give up.  Not yet, anyway.  He could certainly affect some changes in the castle, if he was patient enough.  Compared to the vastness of ‘forever’, a few weeks was relatively little, so he had time.  And really no choice but to be patient.  It was best not to dwell on that aspect, though.  

He briefly wondered if everyone else had experienced the same passage of time he had.  It had been five weeks.  The stars did seem to move appropriately for that amount of time he had been here, in fact, he was using them to calculate how much time had passed. It would make sense that everyone else would experience the passage of time as he has, but he had no way to know for sure.

He was looking through his notebook as he mused over those thoughts.  He realised he had found many rooms and had their current location documented.  Rooms one through eleven and thirteen through twenty-nine were all marked and labelled.  He had found other rooms, numbering as high as sixty-two.  “The numbering is all confused.  Even looking at the map, they aren’t consistent from one floor to the next, nor on each wheel.  Oh, Clara, how am I meant to figure anything out?”

It was funny, though, a nagging at his brain.  Where was Room Twelve?  Maybe he just wanted to find it because of his regeneration.  But it seemed odd that it was missing, especially when the other lower numbered rooms had all been found.  That was the only one missing.

He was walking slowly down a corridor.  He was running out of things to do and that was making him jumpy, so he was forcing himself to take his time.  He checked a near-by monitor and decided he had time to explore some of the lower parts of the castle.  He had avoided them, because there weren’t many ways to escape the creature from down there.  “I said this castle was like me.  But not just me.  I have been known to describe the TARDIS that way too.  Thing is, Clara, I’m not sure I could ever call this place ‘home’.  The TARDIS, however...”

He missed her.  His pocket felt strangely massive and empty without the weight of her key.  He had no connection to her now.  He couldn’t feel her, and he felt more alone than he ever had since leaving Gallifrey.  He briefly wondered if she felt just as lonely.  He remembered the words he had spoken to Rose, back when he was Leather and Ears.  “ _Let the Tardis die. Just let this old box gather dust. No one can open it._ _No_ _one'll even notice it. Let it become a strange little thing standing on a street corner. And over the years, the_ _world'll_ _move on and the box will be buried._ ”

Now, he knew that would have been condemning her to a fresh hell of aging to death alone.  He’s lucky she accepted him back after making such a proclamation.  “I promise, Old Girl, as long as it is within my power, I will _never_ abandon you.  I will get out of here, and I will return to you.”

If everything in the Castle reset, he wondered if he was aging at all.  Either way, they were both trapped in their own Hells.  Alone and without the possibility of contacting each other.  Then Me’s words hit him and knocked the wind out of him.  “ _I made a deal to protect the street. They take you, I take the key so you can’t be traced._ _.._ ”  

He shook his head.  No.  It couldn’t be.  He refused to believe it.  Then her next words came to him, “ _One more thing. Your Confession Dial._ ”

Absolutely horrified at the prospect of what that meant, he slumped against the wall and then sunk to the ground.  The full terror of where he was and what he was experiencing hit him.  He had been so slow.  So stupid.  “Closed energy loop.  A torture chamber.  Making confessions.  She said I can’t be traced and wanted my Confession Dial.  Oh, Clara, can it be?”

He had said he didn’t know how the Confession Dial worked.  No one really did, since it was a rite of purification.  One was on death’s doorstep when they used it.  When they came out again, they died within minutes; which wasn’t enough time to ask what it’s like.  “There are two events in everybody’s life that nobody remembers.  Two moments experienced by every living thing.  Nobody remembers being born.  And nobody remembers dying.  Yet the questions remain for the living: ‘What was it like? Does it hurt?... Are you still scared?’”  

He swallowed thickly at the questions that came to the surface and what that meant for him.  “Is that what awaits me, then?  Death?”

He did something he very rarely allowed himself in this body.  He started to weep.  It just seemed so fruitless to keep fighting when he didn’t even know who he was fighting or why.  These were the kinds of questions the TARDIS would help him answer.  Whenever he didn’t have his companions, he at least had her.  And now?  He had no one. He was more alone than he has ever been in his life.  Cut off from everyone and everything.

He cried until he had no more tears to shed.  And he didn’t feel better for it.  That was why he usually didn’t waste his time crying.  It was like being scared.  Neither helped.  At the end of it all, he still had to face the thing that made him cry or scared.  All he accomplished was wasting time he could have spent doing something to resolve the thing making him feel that way.

Once he collected himself again, he stood and decided it was time.  He was going to be methodical about things.  He would start by finding all the rooms he was missing.  And the first room on his list was Twelve.  He looked at the monitor.  He estimated that he had about thirty-three minutes before he would have to make his way back upstairs to not be trapped by the creature.

He was walking down a very narrow passageway.  He had avoided this because he could get to the other side by other means, and it always felt suffocating.  But this time, he knew he had to try.  He heard stone grinding against stone.  Well, the Castle was moving again, on its own.  He moved toward the sound and found a set of stairs he hadn’t encountered before.  He went down them and at the bottom... He discovered a door labelled with “12.”

He nodded to the door with respect.  “At last.”

With determination, he pulled the door open.  There was a wall in front of it, but it was just the slightest bit open.  Light was spilling forth, so there was something on the other side.  He touched the stone and leaned into the crack to cry out.  “Hello!?  Hello.  Is anyone there?”

He looked around and realised he was in a very vulnerable place.  He had to get moving again.  He started his way back, but at least he knew how to get here now.  “It’s a trap, Clara.  A lure and a trap.  I said I was good at traps.  Be even I get hooked by lures sometimes.” 

He made his way back to a part of the castle that would give him escape options from the creature.  “I know how to move that wall... So long as I don’t run out of confessions...”  It was night now and he made his way back to the topmost tower.  He wanted to look at the sky now.  He figured he knew where he was, but the sky... “What I really want to know is, who’s been playing with the stars? They’re all in the wrong places. I know I didn’t time travel to get here. I can _feel_ time travel. And I can’t be more than I lightyear from where I was.  But the sky...”

The stars had moved properly for the time he had been in here: five weeks, but they hadn’t been in the right place to begin with – if he was only a lightyear from where he had been.  

He froze again as another horrifying thought hit him.  If he was inside his Confession Dial, then the movement of the stars meant that the dial had moved...  He shivered.  He was trapped, in a torture chamber, and someone else could move it wherever they wanted.  As he was thinking that, a small part of his brain noticed the sound of buzzing flies.  He waited.  Patiently.  He knew the Creature was approaching and what it would demand of him.  This time, he had a reason to make a confession.  He needed the wall of Room Twelve to move. He also held an ace up his sleeve.  

The Creature reached out to try to capture him and a moment before it could touch him, he spoke with confidence.  “The Hybrid!”

The Creature froze, but clearly wanted more information.  Good.  He had expected as much.  He slowly turned to stare the Creature down.  “Long before the Time War, the Time Lords knew it was coming. Like a storm on the wind. There were many prophecies and stories. Legends before the fact. One of them was about a creature called the Hybrid. Half Dalek, half Time Lord. The ultimate warrior. But whose side would it be on? Would it bring peace or destruction? Was it real, or a fantasy? I confess: I know the Hybrid is real. I know where it is, and what it is. I confess: I am afraid.”

The Doctor watched the Creature with quiet confidence.  It lowered its hand and then froze as the entire castle started to move again.  Knowing what he had to do, he rushed down to Room 12.  He opened the door and found the wall had moved.  He started to clap one hand again.  He needed to carefully keep track of the time he had.  There was no way out from here that he could see.  

It was a long narrow hallway.  The walls covered in a metallic substance.  The light that shone from the chink was at the very far end.  Form here, it was small because the hall was very long.  He walked down it, pulling his hand along the wall, but the surface was entirely smooth.  There would be no way out from here, if the Creature caught him up.

He continued down the corridor.  When he reached the room, it was a cube.  There was a monitor to show where the creature was, and it held one of the cogwheel chambers.  But more significant was the wall that seemed to be made of some crystal substance at the other side.  He looked up in the topmost edge, he noticed an etching.  When he stepped closer, he could see the word “HOME”.

He touched the crystal substance.  “Of course! The final move. What else would it be?  The TARDIS!  One confession away.  The problem is, I can’t confess what they want to know. And I’m not sure what else the creature would accept.”

He stepped back, took out his sonic specs, and put them on.  He activated them to scan the wall.  “Azbantium. Four hundred times harder than diamond. Twenty feet thick.   Beyond it ...what is that? Dimensional transfer junction, going by the luminescent dissonance. The way out?”

He could only hope.  He did a quick check of the monitor.  He had time.  As long as he made it up the stairs before the Creature got to them, he could still escape.  He walked over to inspect the cogwheel.  When he looked it over, he realised that it would move the corridor, but not the room.  “A fixed room?  Interesting.”

Should always have one of those about.  It makes things easier to have a specific point of reference.  Too bad he just now discovered it.  He checked the monitor again.  No!  No, no, no!  The Creature had already started down the stairs.  He was trapped.  The creature would get him.   He strode around the room, looking for something – anything.  He paced nervously like a tiger, but the only thing that even came close to offering a way out was the Azbantium wall.

He could see the Creature now, only a shadow in the doorway he had entered.  The creature would kill him, he was certain of it.  “What do I do now, Clara?”

On the blackboard the words appeared again: “ **How are** **you going** **to** **WIN** **?** ” 

He shook his head, that wasn’t helpful.  “Yes, but how?  Usually I talk my way out of things, I don’t see how that’s going to work this time.”

This time just the word, " **WIN** **?** ” appeared.  He thought about it.  He had called this the way out.  Maybe his specs were wrong.  He wasn’t sure he could talk his way out of this, but... he turned to the Creature anyway.  He took a breath and spoke.  “Hello again. No more confessions, sorry. But I will tell you the truth.”

He turned back to the wall and prepared himself.  He punched the wall.  It hurt like hell and he made no impact at all, but he was a fighter, it was the only kind of winning he knew: fight to the bitter end.  He punched the wall again.  As he continued to punch the wall, he spoke to the Creature.  “The Hybrid is a secret. It’s a very, _very_ dangerous secret and it needs to be kept.  So I’m telling you nothing. Nothing at all. Instead, I’m going to do something _far_ worse.  I’m going to get out of here. I’m going to find who put me in here in the first place, and whatever they’re trying to do, I’m going to _stop_ it!”

He didn’t feel like he was making any progress as he looked at the wall, so he took a chance and turned back to look at the Creature.  “And then I’m going to come back here, and I’m going to rip it apart with my bare hands, and you too.  But it might take me a little while, so would you like me to tell you a story?”

He turned back to the wall.  This was his only option now.  Die well.  No better way to go than telling a story.  It’s what he does, just a bloke in a Box – telling stories.  “The Brothers Grimm. Lovely fellas. They’re on my darts team.  According to them, there’s this Emperor who asks this shepherd’s boy, ‘How many seconds in eternity?’”

Then he saw the slivery skeletal hands reach around his head and he felt a horrible terrible fire surge through his entire body.  He gasped at the pain.  He didn’t think anything could be worse than regeneration, but somehow this was.  Because he was dying rather than renewing.  He could tell he was too injured to regenerate.  He collapsed to the ground.  He heard the Creature vanish.  His death, then.  He lay there.  Quiet and still, waiting for the final breath to come.  After several moments, he found he was still breathing.  “People always get it wrong with Time Lords.  We take forever to die. Even if we’re too injured to regenerate, every cell of our bodies keeps trying. Dying properly, can take days.  That’s why we like to die among our own kind. They know not to bury us early.”

The blackboard again appeared in his mind. “ **How are you going to** **WIN** **?** ” 

He was tired.  He wanted to just die.  Let it all end.  Just this once, he wanted to let go and have it over, permanently.  This time, rather than seeing the blackboard, he heard a chorus of voices.  All of his companions crying out a resounding, “NO!”

With great effort he started to move a hand and pain surged through him.  But, if his companions suggested that he continue, then he would obey.  He had nothing left anyway.  And it was still going down fighting, which was his way. He raised his head to look at the hall ahead of him.  And an idea came to him.  He had one hope.  One chance at survival.  He had never heard of anyone dying in their Confession Dial, so there had to be some other chance.  “Every room resets - remember I told you that? Every room returns to its original condition.  Logically, that means the teleporter should do the same.  Teleporters. Fancy word. Just like 3-D printers. Except they break down living matter into information and transmit it.”

It was his only hope.  He slowly started to crawl his way down the hall.  “I think, in my current condition, it will take me about a day and a half to reach that chamber.”  He paused to breathe.  He was in a great deal of pain, but the little hope he had was enough to encourage him.  “I think, if I’m lucky, I have a day and a half.”

The most painful part of his climb were the stairs.  He had to put his burned muscles into awkward positions.  It was slow going, and he was right, it took him a day to get to the top of the tower.  Looking down the corridor that led towards the teleport chamber, gave him hope.  And hope gave him strength.  He pulled himself into a standing position.  He continued down the hall, using the wall for support, and finally made it to the chamber.  He looked over the controls.  “The room has reset. Returned to its original condition, when I arrived. That means there’s a copy of me still in the hard drive.”  

He looked around and found some electrodes with suction cups.  Convenient.  Maybe the Castle always meant for this to happen.  He affixed them to his head.  “All I need to do is find some energy. And all you need for energy is something to burn.”

He braced himself.  If he succeeded, then he would have another chance to get it right.  If he failed, at least the death would be quicker.  Decision made, he pulled the lever.  The energy went through him.  Oddly not as painful as the Creature had been.  But he collapsed to the ground.  He still had time.  He could still affect changes in the Castle.  Maybe he could leave himself a message, a clue to move things along quicker next time.  He slowly wrote out the letters, “B-I-R-D”.

He finished the last letter.  He let his hand fall to the ground.  Then he sighed with relief and died.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AN: I’m now at a point of posting as I get chapters written, so the frequency might change a bit. Also, from this point forward, the chapters will get shorter as I’ll mostly focus on showing the continued changes of the clues the Doctor left for himself. I will write enough, so everyone can track where we are in the process. But I won’t put every detail like I did for these first few chapters.


	4. Second Time/Through Week Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Second verse same as the first...
> 
> For this chapter, I did more telling than showing to move the story along (IE: Mainly only ‘showing’ the bits that are different or new). BUT: would you be interested in re-reading everything every time? The would allow you to feel how long it is for the Doctor, rather than feeling the speed up in time as he is able to figure things out faster. I’m happy to do what readers would prefer.
> 
> If the 'faster' option is preferred, you can always track the length of time by reading the chapter titles.
> 
> * * *

The Doctor materialised in the teleporter.  He stepped out and started to explore the castle.  As he came around a corner, he saw some writing on the wall:   
“ **As you come into this world, something else is also born.** ”

He paused and looked at the words.  “What the hell does that mean?”  

He stepped forward, there was something odd about the writing.  Something familiar.  But his brain wouldn’t let him consider it.

He was distracted from his thoughts when a monitor flicker to life.  The monitor had an image of him, as if some camera was watching him.  He looked through the window again and saw a creature.  It scared him terribly, but he couldn’t put his finger on why.  He decided to move away from the creature.  But he ended up encountering it anyway, when he was trapped by the wall that was behind the door.  Well, may as well turn around and face it.  It was curious.  He was terrified of it.  He recognised it from his childhood, but that’s not why it scared him.  There was something else... something more sinister, but he couldn't identify why.  Something deep down told him if the Creature captured him that he would die.  Maybe the words he saw added to his fear of the creature…

He made his first confession and escaped into the bedroom.  He looked around and saw a portrait of Clara.  He offered it a sad smile.  He stepped closer to it to examine it better.  “Interesting.  An oil painting, but no brush-strokes?”

He patted his pockets looking for his jeweller’s eyepiece.  He put it in place and looked at the painting again.  It wasn’t a painting.  It was as if someone had made an oil print of a photograph of Clara.  That was very odd.  As he was studying it, he heard flies swarm around him.  

He knew that meant the creature was close.  He confronted the creature and eventually smashed the window to jump through it.  He dove through the window and into the water at the bottom of the tower.  When he swam to the surface, he looked around.  Besides the castle, he could see nothing but water.  He sighed heavily and swam to where he saw an entryway into the structure.  

He found the boot cupboard and started to warm himself next to the fire.  As he started to dry, he looked around and noticed the drying rack.  On it was a waistcoat.  Nothing else.  Just that.  Weird.  He lifted it to take a closer look at it.  He couldn't believe that it was so similar to his.  “Oh, Clara. What’s going on? What is this place?”

He ran the material through his fingers.  Not similar.  The same.  Exactly the same.  Still, it provided him an idea.  He shed most of his wet clothes and moved closer to the fire to finish drying.  Once he was dry, he left his waistcoat and jacket on the rack.  He had the dry waistcoat, so he would able to put that on at least.  Once his shirt and trousers were dry enough, he put those on, and he moved on to explore more of the Castle.

He found the atrium and noticed that he must have been sitting by the fire longer than he thought.  It was now night time.  He looked up at the sky and frowned.  “That can’t be right.”

He encountered the creature as he tried to exit.  He used the shovel to block the door and when tossed it aside when the creature left.  He decided it was time for a nap.  He got up to his bedroom and spent a long time just staring at the photo of Clara.  “The day you lose someone isn’t the worst.  At least you’ve got something to do. It’s all the days they stay dead.”

He looked around and decided that even if her loss hurt, he could rest a bit under her watchful gaze.  So he laid down to rest.

Sleeping had been a bad idea, as the creature caught up to him again, only this time he was forced to make a confession or be killed by the creature.  The information on the wall flashed into his mind ‘Something else is also born.’  So, the creature and castle were connected somehow, and beyond the obvious of the rooms moving.

He felt sick giving the creature what it wanted.  But he passed near the boot cupboard again, so he checked on his jacket.  It was dry and everything inside it was dry too.  His waistcoat was still hanging there.  He again ran his fingers over the one he had put on earlier.  Something was tugging at his brain, but he didn't like the implications, so ignored it..  Still, he had his pencil and notebook, he could start a map of the castle.

After several hours of that and eating a meal, he returned to his bedroom.  When he looked around, he realised that the window had repaired itself and the stool was back in its place.  “Does every room reset?  Is that how this works?”

It was an experiment he had to perform.  He took one of the flowers out from the vase and carried it to the teleport room.  He placed it on the console.  He looked over the controls.  “Teleporter.  But only allows for entry.  No exit.  Downloads, but no uploads."

He shook his head, in slight confusion as to why that would be the case.  “Too easy to get out, I guess.  The castle is forcing me to face the Creature.”

He looked around the room again and noticed a skull on the ground.  He picked it up.  Slowly and respectfully he disconnected the electrodes.  “There are two events in everybody’s life that nobody remembers.  Two moments experienced by every living thing.  Nobody remembers being born.  And nobody remembers dying.  Yet the questions remain for the living: ‘What was it like? Does it hurt?... Are you still scared?’”

Then he noticed a letter in the sand next to where the skull had been.  “B?”

That’s hardly helpful.  ‘B’ could represent anything.

Just then, he heard the movement of stone against stone.  He looked around and saw an opening.  On the other side was a set of stairs that led up into the tower.  He followed them, while still carrying the skull.  When he reached the top, he set the skull down on a ledge.  He patted the skull the way you might pat a dog’s head.  “There you go, looking at the water has got to be better than looking at sand.”

He left the skull there when the creature found him at the top of the tower and he ran as far away as he could.  “If I draw the Creature to one extreme of the castle, and I run to the other extreme, I can earn myself a maximum of eighty-two minutes.  Eighty-two minutes to do whatever I need to: eat, sleep, learn as much about the castle as I can.”

He later found the library and all the books containing that same strange poem, which the first line of was on the wall.  “In my writing... I said this castle was like me, but that’s... scary.  And not something I want to consider.”

Not yet.  Of course, now his brain was going to not let it go.  “So, was I more afraid of the Creature because I saw those words?  Or was it really just my childhood fears rising to the surface?  Or was it because the words were in my own hand?”

Not that everything didn’t feel sinister at this point.  Everything resetting also seemed creepy, a vision of his waistcoat hanging on the drying rack gave him an idea.  He took off his jacket and took it down to hang on the rack.  It would be a good experiment to see if it remained as well.  While he was down there, the shovel in the atrium gave him an idea.  “Maybe someone wants me to dig.”

He picked an empty part of the atrium and started to dig.  He figured he had enough time to dig four or five feet down.  After seventy-five minutes, he stopped.  He had to stay ahead of the Creature.  The space was the size of a grave, but he found nothing under it.  “Well, it was worth a try.”

It had given him a distraction for an hour, at least, and he was still able to stay ahead of the Creature.  Bored with it, he moved on.  He found an art studio.  The paints and brushes made him think of the writing on the wall.... He smirked.  “I wonder...”

He took some paints and a brush, made a stop by the library to get a book with the poem, and went back to the wall to continue the lines.  Again, it gave him something to do.  He had reached that point: he needed to keep busy enough to not go stir-crazy.  Painting was calming, he knew the patterns to make and it allowed his mind to drift and come up with a way out.  It was clear that he was to find Room 12.  It was the only lower number missing from his map.  

While he was waiting for the paint to dry, he returned to the atrium.  He knew he could make some changes, but would digging a hole be too much?  He looked through the barred windows.  While the shovel had returned to its place, there was a clear indention where he had dug.  It was filled in and the grass had covered it again, but there was a depression.  Interesting.

Every bit of information told him he could do more, but it didn’t help him escape.  He was still trapped.  He still needed to find Room 12.

One day, as he was walking down a hall, he heard a grinding sound.  A staircase he had never seen before was behind the wall.  He followed it.  At the end, he found Room 12.  It was, of course blocked by a wall, but there was a chink, so it could move.  “I guess I’ll have to confront the Creature.  It’s the only way to move the wall.”

He went to the top of the tower because he knew he needed as much time as he could get to explore Room 12.  That was where he waited for the Creature.

The Doctor had been tracking the stars.  He had been here for three weeks.  He looked at the skull sitting on top of the tower.  “The passage of time is normal.  But that’s not what’s concerning.  The stars were five weeks ahead of where I would have expected them to be.  I didn’t time travel to get here.  So how did they get moved about?”

He heard flies buzzing around him.  He smiled to himself and just before the creature touched him, he calmly spoke the words, “The Hybrid.”

After making his confession, the castle moved. The robust movement caused the skull to topple off of the ledge and crash into the water below. 

The Doctor ran through the castle and started to explore Room 12.   It was a very long hallway.   When he reached the end, a wall of dazzling crystal was before him.  He looked back down the hall. “If I didn’t know better, I would say this room is no longer part of the castle...”

He stepped forward to examine the wall more closely.  “It’s been damaged....”

Suddenly an image flashed into his mind.  The skull lying next to the letter ‘B’.  No.  His brain completely shut down for a moment.  He just couldn’t comprehend what his senses were telling him.  Another image flashed into his mind.  This time of his hand burned beyond recognition as he dragged himself painfully across a floor.

No, no, no, no.  He collapsed back against the wall of Azbantium.  He slid down the wall and sank to the floor.  He escaped into his Storm Room.  He was very subdued this time.  He didn’t know what to do.  “I can’t keep doing this.  Can’t I give in? Just this one.  Can’t I lose?”

He saw a blackboard in Clara’s writing: “NO!”

He shook his head at the reply.  “But you’re still gone.  No matter what I do, I can’t save you!”

Suddenly, he heard Clara’s voice.  “Doctor, stop it!”  He looked around and didn’t see her, but her voice continued.  “I’m not the first you’ve lost.  You know what you must do:  Get over it. Beat it. Break free.”

He wanted so desperately to argue with her.  He wanted to tell her that hers was the last, he didn’t want to face that level of grief ever again.  And here, he had the perfect way.  He could just give up.  Let himself go, the way all the others had...

And before him, shimmery images of all those he had lost – whether through death or simply because it was time for them to leave – and the chorus of voices chimed in together with a single word: “WIN!”

He left his Storm Room and took a breath.  Ahead of him, coming down the hall was the creature.  “’B.’ I know what it means now.  The start of a word.  So.  No more confessions...”

He continued to tell the creature about the Brothers’ Grimm and the started to tell the story of the Shepherd’s Boy as he added punches to the wall before him.  He expected it when the Creature burned him.  He had seen a flash of the past before this happened.  But he wasn’t prepared for the pain.  He had to just lie there for several moments to see if he could overcome the pain.

As he started to make his painful way up the stairs, a thought came to him.  “I should have known from the very beginning, of course. The portrait of you ...the Creature from my own nightmares … And the stars. They weren’t in the wrong place. And I haven’t time travelled.  I’ve been here eight weeks...”

He had made his way to the teleporter.  He attached the electrodes to his head.  He had done this before.  He remembered all of it now.  The only difference this time, is he knew it would work.  He didn’t have the fear of it being his permanent death like he had last time.  He pulled the lever and cried out in pain again as the energy pulsed through his system.  He collapsed into the sand. With his last remaining energy, he wrote the letters ‘B-I-R-D' and then died.


	5. Third Time/Through Week Two

The Doctor materialised in the teleporter.  He stepped out and started to explore the castle.  As he came around a corner, he saw some writing on the wall:   
“ **As you come into this world, something else is also born.**    
 **You begin your life and it begins a journey.** ”

He paused and looked at the words.  “What the hell does that mean?”  

He stepped  forward, the writing was familiar.  Too familiar, but his brain refused to believe what his eyes were telling him.

He was distracted from his thoughts when a monitor flicker to life.  The monitor had an image of him, as if some camera was watching him.  He looked through the window again and saw a creature.  It scared him terribly, but he couldn’t put his finger on why.  He decided to move away from the creature.  But he ended up encountering it anyway, when he was trapped by the wall that was behind the door.  Well, may as well turn around and face it.  It was curious.  He was terrified of it.  He recognised it from his childhood, but that’s not why it scared him.  There was something else... something more sinister, but he couldn't identify why.  Something deep down told him if the Creature captured him that he would die.  Maybe the words he saw added to his fear of the creature…

He made his first confession and escaped into the bedroom.  He looked around and saw a portrait of Clara.  He offered it a sad smile.  He stepped closer to it to examine it better.  “Interesting.  An oil painting, but no brush-strokes?”

He patted his pockets looking for his jeweller’s eyepiece.  He put it in place and looked at the painting again.  It wasn’t a painting.  It was as if someone had made an oil print of a photograph of Clara.  That was very odd.  As he was studying it, he heard flies swarm around him.  

He knew that meant the creature was close.  He confronted the creature and eventually smashed the window to jump through it.  He dove through the window and into the water.  When he regained consciousness under the water, he saw something at the bottom.  He didn’t have enough oxygen to last, so he swam to the surface, took some breaths and then dove back underneath to get a closer look.  It was a skull!  A part of him wanted to gasp, but underwater, that was a bad idea.  

He swam to the surface and breathed heavily for a few moments.  He looked around and besides the castle, he could see nothing but water.  He sighed heavily and swam to where he saw an entryway into the structure.  He stepped into what appeared to be a boot cupboard and stood next to the roaring fire.  As he started to warm himself, a drying rack caught his attention.  There was a waistcoat and a jacket hanging on it.  The jacket looked familiar.  He approached it to get a better look.  A red button on the sleeve caught his attention.  It was  _ his  _ jacket.  “Clara, what is this place?”

Still, no sense in wasting time drying things already dried.  He shucked off everything except his pullover and pants and arranged them to dry.  Once his trousers, shirt, and shoes were dry enough, he put them  back on, taking the already dried waistcoat and jacket to complete his look.  Then he headed back into the castle.  

He found the pantry and the hall that led away from it.  At the end of that hall, he saw the atrium.  There was something weird about the place.  There was an indention where the ground didn’t line up with everything else.  He entered to get a closer look.  He noticed a shovel.  “Does someone want me to dig?  What would you do, Clara?”     

He saw her script on the blackboard :  ** Same as you. **

He nearly scoffed.  “Of course.  And let’s be honest, that’s what killed you.”

He felt rage at himself boil up.  So, he stood and nodded at the shovel.  He looked at the monitor,  somehow he knew the image before him, though how could he since he’s never been here before, was beyond him.  “Building this height and creature that slow.  An hour to dig.”  

It would help quell the anger that he felt.  Manual labour was good for that.  about thirty minutes later, he looked up at the stars they were... odd.  “That can’t be right.”

He went back to digging.  Something was nagging at his mind, but he couldn’t put his finger on it.  He heard a buzzing sound and quickly jumped out of the hole to look at the monitor.  It was blank.  Not snowy as it had been when he first arrived, but black – dark.  “Do monsters sleep these days?  How very modern.”

He decided to return to digging.  Once he was about five feet down, he heard a buzzing sound.  He stopped and looked around again.  But didn’t see anything where the creature could be.  Suddenly, from the side of the hole, where it was only dirt, the creature pushed through and moved to attack the Doctor.  He made his confession about leaving  Gallifrey , and escaped to a place where he could look out over the water.  He watched as the skull he had seen before, bobbled to the surface and then sunk back under the ripples. 

He returned to his bedroom, where Clara’s portrait was.  He rested his head against the mantle.  He felt sick to his stomach.  “Oh, Clara, it’s so hard to be brave when I’m so alone.  Why do I keep giving it what it wants?”

He gasped then.  He had lost track of time.  He looked over to the monitor.  The creature was in the pantry.  He had said before that it was about an hour to get this distance.  Time to test that theory.  He found a chair, sat down and started counting the minutes.  He eventually heard the flies buzz around him.  “Fifty-seven minutes!”

He had been right.  About an hour.  He spent until the middle of the next day testing how long he could get.  “Eighty-two minutes is the maximum amount I can consistently get.”

Long enough for a nap.  He needed a nap.  He had been pushing himself too hard.  Not just here, but distracting Clara... No!  Thinking like that was pointless!  It was like being scared or  worrying: it didn’t help.   From this part of the castle, it would be best to let the creature catch up, then run to the library and take a nap there. 

He woke seventy minutes later.  He felt a little better for the rest.  He still had a few minutes, so he used the time to explore the books in the library, which is how he discovered the poem that he had seen  written on the wall earlier. He gasped at that thought.  He had recognised the handwriting, though he hadn’t wanted to admit it.  It was his script.  He didn’t like the implications of his handwriting being on the wall in the castle.  But if he wrote it, then…  “ Clearly there are paints somewhere, then…”

He went in search of the paints.   He came across the gallery containing the portraits of the companions forever lost to him.   For some moments he stood before the empty space where Clara’s portrait had clearly hung.  Then he realised something.   “River’s not here.”

Odd that gave him more hope than he had felt in the last several hours.  There was a way out of here and he would see her again!   Renewed by that thought, he found the paints and went back to where the poem had been written on the wall.  He finished writing it.  

Since he was in this part of the castle, he decided to take another look at the teleporter.   He looked over the controls.  “Teleporter.  But only allows for entry.  No exit.  Downloads, but no uploads. The castle is forcing me to face the creature.”

He looked around the room again and noticed a skull on the ground.  He picked it up.  Slowly and respectfully he disconnected the electrodes.  Then he noticed a letter in the sand next to where the skull had been.  “B?”

That’s hardly helpful.  ‘B’ could represent anything.

Just then, he heard the movement of stone against stone.  He looked around and saw an opening.  On the other side was a set of stairs that led up into the tower.  He followed them, while still carrying the skull.  When he reached the top, he set the skull down on a ledge.  He patted the skull the way you might pat a dog’s head.  “There you go, looking at the water has got to be better than looking at sand.”

He spent a few moments there, looking out across the sea.  Even with his excellent vision, he saw nothing beyond the castle but endless water and endless sky.  That was less than encouraging.  He shoved his hands in his pockets and made his way back downstairs, he didn’t want to get trapped by the creature.  

The castle reset, he knew that by now, but clearly, he could affect some changes.  The poem was a clue, he was certain the letter ‘B’ was a clue as well, though he didn’t know of what.  Clara’s portrait gave him inspiration.  His map… this drive to find Room 12.  That took too long to discover what he was looking for.  He wondered how he could leave himself a clue for that.  He didn’t know how long it was before the changes he made remained intact, but if he left several clues in different places, maybe it would help. 

He thought back over his actions when he first entered the castle even retracing his steps .  Leaving a clue  in the teleport room would be pointless, he hadn’t even noticed the skull  when he had first arrived .   He walked out, noticed the poem was still written upon the wall, he shook his head, it would be too many clues at once.   Then he was chased by the creature,  into the bedroom.  No.  He was distracted by Clara’s picture.  Then he dove through the window and ended up…

At the base, he ran down to the antechamber.  No good.  He had been distracted by his clothes.  He made his way to the kitchen and looked around.  This would be the first place he’d really be ready to look around.  He scowled.  “This is a rubbish place to leave a clue.”

On the chalkboard in his mind, he saw some writing :  ** Only the wrong clue. **

He huffed.  “Were you always this helpful?”

** Of course. **

He shook his head.  That wasn’t Clara, that was him.  It worked much better if he felt like he was talking to Clara rather than himself.  He walked carefully around the kitchen a few times.  What sort of clue could he leave for  himself.   There was a tiny wobble under his footstep.  One of the stone pieces had moved.  He rocked back and forth.  It was  definitely loose .  Interesting.  He bent over and felt around the different pieces and found the loose one.  He heard the creature coming up behind him.  “Time to run!”

He only had time to leave himself a brief clue as to which stone it was, not enough time to do anything with it.  So, he took out a piece of chalk and drew an arrow pointing to it.  Then he took off running, only just escaping the creature.

He ran to the opposite side of the castle and then waited for the creature.  “All this back and forth, it’s getting boring.  The castle is only so big and, in the end, only so many rooms are accessible to me.  I’m not going to randomly make a confession just to have more parts of the castle to explore.”

Though, now that he thought about it, that was terribly tempting.  He pulled out his book and started to sketch more images of the castle into it.  He even drew a little diagram of the loose stone he found in the kitchen.  He flipped through the book trying to give himself ideas of what clues he could leave for himself and places he could leave them.  There were only a few places, that would help him to speed up his search for Room 12.  Even then, there would be the issue of making confessions.  But that was too complex to leave as a simple clue.  Besides, he didn’t want it over too quickly, or he would never properly explore the castle.  He needed to take that time.  If it was over too quickly then he would learn nothing.  He knew that about himself.

Me did have him figured out, he needed a mystery.  He growled in anger at that thought.  “She was arrogant.”

On the chalkboard he saw Clara’s writing:   ** Not just her. **

“Okay fine, not just her.  Me too.”

The chalkboard was blank.  Clara was waiting for something.  He sighed heavily.  He didn’t want to admit it.  He didn’t want to acknowledge why all of this happened.

“Yes.  You too.  The arrogance of all three of us led to your death.  Happy?”

The chalkboard was still blank.

“You want me to be angry with you?  Is that it?  You told me to stop when I showed it towards Me.  You ordered me to not be a monster to not cause the suffering of anyone else.  And you think it’s okay to be angry with you?”

** I’m already dead. **

“I know.  I was there.”

** I cannot suffer. **

“No.  But I can.”  He paused briefly, considering that reply.  “I do.”  There.  That was the more honest answer.  “So, is it braver to keep myself in check, or to let myself rage while I’m here?  Eternity is a very long time to be trapped in one’s own Hell.  Don’t want to go through all the emotions too early and get bored.”

** Yes. **

The Doctor tilted his head.  “Yes.  Yes what?”

** Be angry with me. **

He frowned deeply at that.  He checked the monitor.  He had time.  “Okay.  I’m angry with you! Happy?  What you did... was the stupidest thing you could’ve done.  You tried to be like me, but  you pudding brains never understand that you can’t!  You wither and die.  I regenerate.  The dangerous things should be left to me!”

**That’s anger at yourself.**    
 **Be angry with me!**

The Doctor paused.   Actually stopped .  Like the gears in the castle, the gears in his head came to a sudden halt.  He deflated.  “Is there any difference?  You’re my friend.  How can be angry with you without being angry at the example I set for you?”

** I told you, it was my choice. **

“Me could have saved you.”

** She said she couldn’t. **

“She was wrong.”  He wouldn’t say she lied.  She simply may not have known, but the point was she could have saved Clara, had she tried.  He sighed.  “So were you.”

** What was I wrong about? **

“Me.  And I mean me, not  Ashildr .”  He paused, waiting for some reply.  When none came, he continued.  “ You thought all those times I was a warrior, that I sought revenge, that I wasn’t a Doctor.   I didn’t use the name then because I didn’t see myself as the Doctor.  Plenty of others did.  It’s why they trusted me with  _ The Moment _ .”  

It was a terrible and cruel burden to place upon him.  But he also understood why they had chosen him, even if he hated it.  He was one of the very few who stayed as true to himself as he could throughout the war.  He didn’t go mad with power or control.  He simply did what he had always  done:   everything he could to protect the Universe.

“I told you once, after you decided to leave me, that sometimes the only choices you have are bad ones.  It doesn’t make me less the Doctor when I still choose in those moments.  Being a warrior is as much about being the Doctor as anything, because in the end, it always comes down to saving people.  Sometimes it means making terrible mistakes, but in the end, saving people, protecting this universe is who I am.  I don’t know how to do things any different.”

**And now you’re here.**    
 **Saving yourself will protect the universe.**

He hadn’t thought of it like that.  Well,  yes he had.  This was still him talking to himself, just using Clara’s voice to do it.   But this was the first time he was acknowledging it.  He checked the monitor.  It was time to go back to the kitchen.

The arrow he had drawn was still there.  Good.  He drew more arrows around the loose stone and then he started to shift it out of place.  It was heavier than he expected, but not so much that he couldn’t turn it over. He took the time to etch the number “12” onto the stone.  Then he put the stone back in place.

Now he had to leave it and see if the etching remained.  He might have been making too many changes at once, which would be unfortunate.  

Several days passed in this way:  he would check on the changes he had made.  If things reverted, he would put the changes in again.  They needed to be clues, not a map.  Maps were too easy.

He had finally discovered Room 12.  He had to be patient, and the room revealed itself, when it was time.  The Doctor had been here two weeks.  He looked at the skull sitting on top of the tower.  “The passage of time is normal.  But that’s not what’s concerning.  The first time I looked at the stars, they were nearly two months ahead of where I would have expected them to be.  I didn’t time travel to get here.  So how did they get moved about?” 

He heard flies buzzing around him.  He smiled to himself and just before the creature touched him, he calmly spoke the words, “The Hybrid.”  

The creature froze and waited for him to make his confession.  Then he went down to room 12 and only found the shimmering wall of  Azbantium .  He stepped forward to examine the wall more closely.  “It’s been damaged.... not much, but little marks.  It’s not unmarred as I would expect it to be... ”  

Suddenly an image flashed into his mind.  The skull lying next to the letter ‘B’.  No.  His brain completely shut down for a moment.  He just couldn’t comprehend what his senses were telling him.  Another image flashed into his mind: his hand burned beyond recognition as he dragged himself painfully across a floor. 

No, no, no, no.  He collapsed back against the wall of  Azbantium .  He slid down the wall and sank to the floor.  He did not want to go through this again.  It was always his personal hell.  No one else was here, and no one else could help him.  He looked ahead of him and coming down the hall was the creature.  “’B.’ I know what it means now.  The start of a word.  So.  No more confessions...” 

He continued to tell the creature about the Brothers’ Grimm and the started to tell the story of the Shepherd’s Boy as he added punches to the wall before him.  He expected it when the Creature burned him.  He had seen a flash of the past before this happened.  But he wasn’t prepared for the pain.  He had to just lie there for several moments to see if he could overcome the pain. 

As he started to make his painful way up the stairs, a thought came to him.  “I should have known from the very beginning, of course. The portrait of you ...the creature from my own nightmares … And the stars. They weren’t in the wrong place. And I haven’t time travelled.  I’ve  now  been here nearly three months...  Living this life on repeat.” 

He had made his way to the teleporter.  He attached the electrodes to his head.  He had done this before.  He remembered all of it, now.  The only difference this time, is he knew it would work.  He didn’t have the fear of it being his permanent death like he had last time.  He pulled the lever and cried out in pain again as the energy pulsed through his system.  He collapsed into the sand. With his last remaining energy, he wrote the letters ‘B-I-R-D' and then died.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the REALLY LONG delay, but I've been working insane hours the past 5 months. That is finally ending, so I hope to get to posting more regularly again.


	6. Eventually How we see things

The Doctor materialised in the teleporter.  He stepped out and started to explore the castle.  As he came around a corner, he saw some writing on the wall:  
“ **As you come into this world, something else is also born.**  
**You begin your life and it begins a journey. Towards you!** ”

He paused and looked at the words.  “That's rather ominous, isn’t it?” 

He stepped forward; the writing was familiar.  Too familiar...

He was distracted from his thoughts when a monitor flicker to life.  The monitor had an image of him, as if some camera was watching him.  He looked through the window again and saw a creature.  It scared him terribly, but he couldn’t put his finger on why.  He decided to move away from the creature.  But he ended up encountering it anyway, when he was trapped by the wall that was behind the door.  Well, may as well turn around and face it.  It was curious.  He was terrified of it.  He recognised it from his childhood, but that’s not why it scared him.  There was something else... something more sinister, but he couldn't identify what.  Something deep down told him if the Creature captured him that he would die.  Maybe the words he saw added to his fear…

He made his first confession and escaped into the bedroom.  He looked around and saw a portrait of Clara.  He offered it a sad smile.  He stepped closer to it to examine it better.  “Interesting.  An oil painting, but no brush-strokes?”

He patted his pockets looking for his jeweller’s eyepiece.  He put it in place and looked at the painting again.  It wasn’t a painting.  It was as if someone had made an oil print of a photograph of Clara.  That was very odd.  As he was studying it, he heard flies swarm around him. 

He knew that meant the creature was close.  He confronted the creature and eventually smashed the window to jump through it.  He dove through the window and into the water.  When he regained consciousness under the water, he saw something at the bottom.  He didn’t have enough oxygen to last, so he swam to the surface, took some breaths and then dove back underneath to get a closer look.  There were two skulls! 

He swam to the surface and breathed heavily for a few moments.  He looked around and besides the castle, he could see nothing but water.  He sighed heavily and swam to where he saw an entryway into the structure.  He stepped into what appeared to be a boot cupboard and stood next to the roaring fire.  As he started to warm himself, a drying rack caught his attention.  There was a waistcoat and a jacket hanging on it.  The jacket looked familiar.  He approached it to get a better look.  A red button on the sleeve caught his attention.  It was _his_ jacket. 

Still, no sense in wasting time drying things already dried.  He shucked off everything except his pullover and pants and arranged them to dry.  Once his trousers, shirt, and shoes were dry enough, he put them back on, taking the already dried waistcoat and jacket to complete his look.  Then he headed back into the castle. 

He found the pantry and noticed a chalk arrow pointing at one of the stones in the floor.  Curious.  The stone was loose, so he turned it over and found... nothing.  “Why point it out when there’s nothing there?”

He replaced the stone and continued his explorations.

At the end of that hall, he saw the atrium.  There was something weird about the place.  There was an indention where the ground didn’t line up with everything else.  He entered to get a closer look.  He noticed a shovel.  “Does someone want me to dig?  What would you do, Clara?”    

Once he was about five feet down, he heard a buzzing sound.  He stopped and looked around again.  But didn’t see anything where the creature could be.  Suddenly, from the side of the hole, where it was only dirt, the creature pushed through and moved to attack the Doctor.  He made his confession about leaving Gallifrey, and escaped to a place where he could look out over the water.  He watched as the skull he had seen before, bobbled to the surface and then sunk back under the ripples.

He returned to his bedroom, where Clara’s portrait was.  He noticed that everything had returned to its place:  The stool, the window was no longer broken, the flower was back in its vase.  His jeweller’s eyepiece was on the ground he picked it up and looked at it.  Rather than pocketing it, he placed it on the mantle next to the picture.

Eventually, he discovered the poem that he had seen written on the wall earlier.  He gasped at that thought.  He had recognised the handwriting, though he hadn’t wanted to admit it.  It was his script.  He didn’t like the implications of his handwriting being on the wall in the castle.  But if he wrote it, then… “Clearly there are paints somewhere, then…”

He found them and returned to where the poem was so he could finish writing it.  Clearly, he was leaving himself clues, but to what end?  He didn’t remember being here before, yet there was proof he had been here before.

Since he was in this part of the castle, he decided to take another look at the teleporter.  He looked over the controls.  “Teleporter.  But only allows for entry.  No exit.  Downloads, but no uploads.  The castle is forcing me to face the creature.”

He looked around the room again and noticed a skull on the ground.  He picked it up.  Slowly and respectfully he disconnected the electrodes.  Then he noticed a letter in the sand next to where the skull had been.  “Bi?  It means halfway, but through what?  Or the symbol for Bismuth, great substance for fire-safety. But that doesn’t seem like a problem here.”

Just then, he heard the movement of stone against stone.  He looked around and saw an opening.  On the other side was a set of stairs that led up into the tower.  He followed them, while still carrying the skull.  When he reached the top, he set the skull down on a ledge.  He patted the skull the way you might pat a dog’s head.  “There you go, looking at the water has got to be better than looking at sand.”

He spent a few moments there, looking out across the sea.  Even with his excellent vision, he saw nothing beyond the castle but endless water and endless sky.  That was less than encouraging.  "This castle, my bespoke torture chamber, it’s very me.  It’s complicated.  Goes on and on...”  He sighed heavily as he looked across the empty water.  “...It is alone.”

The castle reset, he knew that by now, but clearly, he could affect some changes.  Clues had been left all over the place.  Clara’s portrait gave him inspiration.  His clothes drying on the rack.  His drive to find Room 12.  That took too long to discover what he was looking for.  He wondered how he could leave himself a better clue for that.  But it had to be a clue, not just something obvious.

The first idea that came to his mind was the loose stone in the kitchen.  He went down there and etched ‘12’ into it, then replaced it.

It took several days, but another part of the poem, his jewller’s eyepiece, the number ‘12’ etched in the stone, and even his shirt on the drying rack remained.  But he was no closer to finding the room.  “Which means I have to wait.  I hate waiting.”

He couldn’t be idle.  Even if he had to wait for walls to move around, he continued to try to find the room.  And ensure the changes he made remained.

 

* * *

 

It took thousands of years, but he eventually completed all the clues and limited his time in the castle to only a few days.  Well, just under a week total when you considered the time it took him to climb back to the teleporter room after the creature caught him.  Then it took the rest of the 4.5 billion years to break through the Azbanthium.  But, that was easy.  Hell.  But easy.  He had left enough clues to inspire himself to find room 12 within a few days, rather than nearly a week, but kept them interesting enough that he wouldn’t give up and consider himself ‘stuck’. 

As with many things in his life, it was about balance.  And he had finally made it.  His only regret was he had no way to remind himself sooner than standing before the wall of Azbanthium of how many times he had repeated this process.  But, maybe that was for the best.  It was hard enough to fight the discouragement for those few short minutes.


	7. Epilogue

From the time in the Dial, the Doctor had learned a lot about himself.  He had learned a lot about what the Time Lords wanted.  He knew the hybrid they searched for was Me.  Ashildr.  She had been his greatest failure and of course the Time Lords would find a way to exploit that. 

He pocketed the Confession Dial and turned his back on the Citadel.  There was nothing for him there.  They would need to come to him.  He earned that right.  He started to walk across the Drylands.  There was only one place for him now: the barn.

It was a long walk.  And it was lonely.  But he was free and that meant more now than it had in the past.  He really had no idea how long he had been in the dial and he had no idea how it had gotten from Me’s possession to Gallifrey.  While he didn’t know how Confession Dials worked, he was pretty sure this wasn’t one of the features.  It didn’t make sense.

In his mind he saw Clara’s writing: **Does any of it make sense?**

“Are you still about?  Thought you would’ve left with my escape.”

**I’m always with you.  You know that.**

“Yes, but if I have anything to say about it, I won’t need you like this much longer.”

Clara had no reply to that.  He wasn’t sure if he was glad for her silence or felt lonelier due to it.  Besides, he had a bigger question to answer: He went into the Dial as the Doctor.  Did he come out as the Doctor?

**You’re always the Doctor.**

“Am I? You see, it’s a matter of continuity of existence.  Way back when I was brand-new in this form, I told the Half-Face Man the story of the broom: replacing the brush, then replacing the handle and doing that over and over.  It’s no longer the same broom.  That’s what happened to me.  Teleporters are fancy 3-D printers, but they don’t actually transport you.  Your atoms are analysed and compressed into a digital format, then transferred and reassembled on the other side.  But the philosophical argument could be made that you’re not you.  The continuity of existence is broken.  Well, sometimes.”

**Only Sometimes?**

“It depends on the technology used.  All those years ago on Marinus, the dials Arbitan gave to us, worked the same way as the TARDIS: disappears here, reappears there.  The continuity was maintained, because there was no transfer of form.  Vortex Manipulators work in much the same way.  But teleporters are completely different.  The living material is broken down, stored in a computer and another computer reassembles the information.  Like I said: 3-D printers.  Say you design a toy on the computer.  It’s two-dimensional on the screen.  Then you click ‘print’.  The object is printed in 3-D, but is it the same object as what was on the screen?  Of course not!”

**Depends how you define existence, then.**

“Indeed.  What makes someone, ‘them’?  I had never used a teleporter like that before strictly because of this problem.  And now, in the dial, I’ve died billions of times. So, am I still me?  Even though, in a sense, I was ‘reset’, I remember every time.  My continuity of consciousness somehow remained intact.  But physically?  I’m like that broom. So, am I the same or not?”

**Sounds like an existential crisis.**

“Do you blame me?”

 **It’s not something I expected from you.**  
**It’s too human.**

The Doctor chuckled softly.  “Maybe it is.  But, one’s existence and how someone defines that is something every sentient being faces.”

**I suppose that’s true.  Where are you going?**

A thoughtful look crossed the Doctor’s features.  “To a place where I can think about these questions and maybe discover some answers.”

That was a lie.  He knew there weren’t really answers to the questions.  He needed to go where he felt safe.  If there was such a place left on this planet.  He had destroyed it and brought it back.  He debated whether that was a good thing or not.  But seeing the place around him, he knew that he hadn’t saved Gallifrey at a time he wanted to.  It was saved at the end of the Time War, which made him hate this place all the more.

**Doctor, stop.  This won’t help.**

“Oh, and what do you think might help, hmmm?”

**Amy’s Letter.**

“H-how do you know about that? River is the only one who knows about it.”

**It’s in your head and so am I.**

“You’re cheating.”

**Read the letter!**

“I have.  Many times.”

**Not in this body.**

That was true.  And no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t argue with this request.  He looked around and noticed a small boulder that would be good for sitting, so he approached it.  He took his jacket off and reached into one of the pockets.  He always carried the letter with him, even if he didn’t always read it.  Since his jacket was already off, he draped it over the rock so he wouldn’t get his trousers dirty, and sat down.

He read it.  And read it again.  And read a very specific part a third time.

“ _And above all else, know that we will love you. Always. Sometimes I do worry about you, though. I think once we're gone, you won't be coming back here for a while, and you might be alone, which you should never be. Don't be alone, Doctor._ ”

It was a reoccurring theme.  Everyone always told him not to be alone.  “Why does everyone always tell me that?”

**That’s not the important part.  
Why don’t you ever focus on the important part?**

“Because it’s too hard.  It means people worry about me.  Around me, people should worry about themselves.  Otherwise, they end up dead.”

**Like me?**

“Precisely like you.”

**I didn’t do it for you.**

“No.  You did it to be _like_ me.  That’s even worse.”

**I think you need to read that part again.**

“Which part?”

**The part you always ignore.**

He swallowed thickly.  It was the part he always ignored in any situation because he didn’t think he was good enough.  No matter how much he tried to make up for all the damage he’d done at any point in his life, he never could.  He sighed heavily and read it again.  “ _Know that we will love you. Always_.”

He pulled a hand down his face.  “Is it enough?”

**You’re the one who said ‘love is a promise’.  
So, you tell me.**

He folded the sheet of paper and tucked it back in the pocket.  Then he picked up his jacket and continued his trek across the Drylands.  “It’s easier for me to do that for others than to accept it from them.”

**You don’t like being vulnerable.**

“When did this turn into a counselling session?”

**It’s been that all along.**

Again, he couldn’t argue with that.  He wished he could. But, counselling was what he needed right now.  Honestly, he needed more than himself, but no one could possibly understand at this point. And he wasn’t sure there was anyone on Gallifrey left that he could go to.  There were plenty he wanted to seek out: Romana, Leela, his family… But even if they were still alive, which he doubted, he would never burden them with this.

As he did everything else, he had to do this alone.  The voice in his head was right, he couldn’t save Clara if he were off-kilter like he was right now.  Saving Clara was something else he needed to face…

**Avoiding it won’t help you.**

He huffed.  “Fine.  What do you suggest?”

**You know where to go.**

“Why would they take me back?”

**Because of what Amy said.**

“It always comes back to ‘love’.”

**Yes.  And you know why.**

“Do I?”

**Love is a promise and so is your name.**

He rolled his eyes and huffed again.  “That’s hardly fair.  Using that against me.”

**It’s the truth.**

“Doesn’t mean I have to like it.  And what do I do once I’m there?”

**You’re the Man who won the Time War.  But you need to finish what you started.**

“What does that mean?”

**That is for you to find out.**

Ahead of him, the Doctor saw the Barn.  He grimaced.  He didn’t really like where these thoughts were leading him, but he also knew there was only one way to escape Gallifrey now.  Escaping meant facing things he hadn’t wanted to.  Facing things he had managed to avoid the entire time in the Confession Dial.  Maybe the old stories were right, maybe it was an act of purification.  He now had one opportunity that no one else ever had before: to use what he had learned as he lived out the rest of his life.

 

The End.


End file.
